QBMotion

Load Position Length

Having a load position that is too long and open, (or too compact) is a sure fire way to negatively affect your throwing performance.
When you properly use your body to accelerate and whip your arm to launch the ball, the starting length of your arm determines the efficiency of the whip.

An easy way to understand this is to think about other sports like golf, baseball, hockey or tennis.
A 6’ tall golfer won’t drive the ball very far with kids clubs. Nor will they be able to effectively swing a driver that is fitted to a lanky 6’7” athlete.
A youth little league hitter won’t be very successful swinging an adult bat.
You’ll never see an adult tennis player choose a shorter youth racquet.
And so on.
The examples are everywhere and they all reveal that lever length is critical to performance.

Over the last 34yrs of professional work with throwing athletes I’ve amassed a lot of practical knowledge about what movements, angles and sequences are optimal for the most efficient approach to throwing a football.
When it comes to load position of the throwing arm I use the simplified term of 90°/90°, but in actual practice I look for angles of roughly 85° at both the armpit and the elbow. I find this 85°/85° position puts the arm and ball in the most optimal position for effortless power with minimal biomechanical strain.
As you’ll see in this teaching clip with he has a tendency to get long. The exaggerated cue of ‘put the ball in your ear hole’ has the desired effect of bringing that elbow slightly inside 90°.

The turn strategy makes the throw.

Some offences require more RPO/play action Flip-to-Throw scenarios than others, but mastering control of this movement is valuable to any QB in any system.

Being able to accurately drive the ball like QB immediately following a 180° hip flip is only consistently possible with a proximal flip strategy that lands in a full-foot, stable, deep-hip position.

This position not only establishes balance and leverage but it elastically coils the back hip to produce more rotary power than simply throwing from a prepass position.

Listen to the cues.
“No front hand. Small arm.”

QB knows exactly what this means, and what he’s supposed to do to drive the ball out in front of receiver
The reminders I’m giving him are to minimize effort and power contribution from his arms, and to optimize his overall armpath.
This part of our session was dedicated to trusting the functional power generation from his hips and core.

Coaching mechanics properly isn’t easy. It’s also not ‘hard’.
It’s just subtle and nuanced.
It’s sophisticated and it’s not for everyone, despite the trend I’m seeing in the QB training industry.

Please understand that playing the position DOES NOT make you qualified to make aggressive social media videos with bold declarations about the science of human movement, any more than having a kinesiology degree makes me qualified to play QB.
Please also understand that I focus solely on the scope of practice to which I’m extensively qualified, and a lot of developing QBs would be better off if more coaching professionals would do the same.
Simply put: Coach what you are truly qualified to coach, and leave the rest to others. You will build a brand that is centered around true expertise, authenticity and honesty.

Are you just spinning?
Being ‘rotary’ or ‘rotational’ as a QB is a good thing, but all rotation is not created equal.
The magic behind rotary mechanics comes with developing dexterity in the sequence of the lower-upper rotation.

In the first rep of this Elbow Smash teaching drill does a good job of ‘turning’ but there is little to no dissociation/lag/separation between the turn of his lower body and the turn of his upper body.
He’s basically just ‘spinning’ on the spot.
As a result there is minimal Spiral Sling Tension generated across the core musculature, which should be the primary power source during efficient rotary throwing mechanics.
In the next two reps Ashton has much more effective sequence/timing.
The elastic recoil that occurs when the hips turn before the shoulders is like a turbo boost to the arm.
QBs should do everything possible to learn to feel this dissociation and capitalize on it when throwing.

Shortstop Drill
Track and gather the one-hop pass, flip the hips to align to the target, find the back hip and initiate a quality throw.
.renzullo

One-Step Scissor Pop Throw
I was working this drill with Utah QB yesterday and he got really locked in.
This kid’s QB ability is unreal.

I was thinking about sharing a clip, and knew that I’d have to explain my rationale for regularly working this technique with my QBs.

Basically “You’re in a terrible spot to make a throw, the pocket has collapsed, you can’t escape and don’t have room to reset. There’s only 6-8 inches (in any direction) to step into for leverage and power generation.
But there’s still a chance.”

And then I went to watch in his flag game last night and he threw this ball in overtime to win the game.
The catch was incredible but the ball had to get there. 💪🏼